He was born in
Esslingen in the
Kingdom of Württemberg, then part of the
German Confederation, on 1 July 1849. His father, William Hawkins, was a British naval officer, and his mother, Louise Von Welden, an Austrian
baroness. Though destined for a military career, he broke with his family in 1873 and moved to France, eventually becoming a naturalized French citizen in 1895. After settling in Paris, he studied under
William-Adolphe Bouguereau,
Jules Joseph Lefebvre, and
Gustave Boulanger at the
Académie Julian in Paris from 1873 to 1876, and went on to attend the
École des Beaux-Arts in 1876. Hawkins rose to fame after exhibiting a portrait of
Sarah Bernhardt at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Francais in 1878. He continued showing works at the
Salon from 1880 to 1891. He received and declined state commissions. Hawkins gravitated toward Symbolist circles and exhibited paintings at the Salon de la Société des Beaux-Arts (1894–1911), the
Salon de la Rose + Croix (1894–95), and
La Libre Esthétique in Brussels. He cultivated close friendships with leading figures of the movement, including
Jean Lorrain,
Paul Adam,
Laurent Tailhade,
Robert de Montesquiou, and
Stéphane Mallarmé, who welcomed him into their celebrated gatherings on the rue de Rome. He lived for a period with
Camille Pelletan, a radical
socialist politician, and he continued to move in radical circles. In his
Portrait of Séverine (1895), he shows a popular journalist,
Séverine, who was a famous defender of humanitarian causes. He was also friendly with artists such as
James Abbott McNeill Whistler,
Maria Olenina-d'Alheim, and
Auguste Rodin, whose portraits he painted. Between 1892 and 1897, he contributed writings to the
Mercure de France under the pseudonym "Quazi," and in 1899 he published and illustrated a children's book,
La Reine du jardin. In the 1900s he exhibited in London and collaborated with
The Artist and Journal of Home Culture, while in Paris he contributed portrait drawings to , a magazine run by his brother-in-law Francesco Zeppa. He spent his last years in
Brittany, where he painted mostly coastal landscapes around
Perros-Guirec. Hawkins died of a
heart attack at his family home in the
17th arrondissement of Paris on 1 May, 1910, aged 60. He was honored a year later at the Salon Nationale. ==Style==